


Five Years Gone

by iam_spock (FanficbyLee), Senket



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Missing in Action, Reunions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-23 18:37:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/929753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FanficbyLee/pseuds/iam_spock, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Senket/pseuds/Senket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years ago, Jim Kirk vanished from a going-away mission. Four and a half years ago, he was presumed dead by Starfleet and the Enterprise's mission to find him changed. Five minutes ago, Spock and Leonard McCoy mourned their absent lover. Five seconds ago... well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Five Years Gone - 1

**Author's Note:**

> Round robin McSpirk story. We are not sure how long it will be. Authors are iam_spock (fanficbylee), senket, and icarus_rising.
> 
> This fic will not be completed. But a new version that is only Spirk has been started with the same title.

“It has been raining for sixty-seven point five hours.” When the rainy season started I found it interesting to hear the drops falling, striking leaves, blades of grass, against the windows of Leonard’s house, and the barbeque he had on the deck. I knew that it would rust from the moisture, but of all the sounds the rain was making, it striking the metal lid was the most pleasing. 

“It’s not the end of the world, Spock,” Leonard said as he handed me a mug of hot Earl Grey. I could smell his coffee and the dollop of bourbon that he’d put in it. He did it for the taste these days. We’d had five years to heal from our loss. The wounds were still there, but they were no longer festering. 

“I know.” I took the cup, breathing in the curling steam while I waited for it to cool. My lower body temperature made it quite easy for me to burn my tongue, and that was a sensation that I was not particularly fond of. “Are you all right?” 

“I’m fine.” Being fine was a joke between us. Being fine meant that we were alive. We were happy, but on some level we were hurt. This pain would always be with us, and I had no doubt that it would be doubled when I lost Leonard as well. We missed Jim. We would always miss him. 

I leaned close, taking his cup and mine, putting them on the windowsill and ran my fingers through his hair. He was graying at the temples. I liked it. I was not. He hated that. Our foreheads touched before our lips, and our minds opened to each other. After so many years together our souls were tangled. We carried our memories of our lives there along with our memories of Jim and Enterprise. 

“We should’ve gone off world,” Leonard groused. “Not that it helped last year. Goddamn time is supposed to heal wounds, Spock.” 

“We will heal, Leonard.” I kissed him once more while we twined our fingers together. I heard a vehicle pull onto the driveway. Its wheels churning through the wet gravel, but I did not stop holding him until I heard the car door open and close. “We also have company.” 

Leonard went to open the door, while I walked at his side. The footstep was familiar, and it made me falter in my own. I put my hand on Leonard’s shoulder before he could open the door. It was selfish, but I had to see first. It was ridiculous to believe my ears, and I could not explain it to him. 

“Are you going to open the door, or do I have to drown?” We had not heard that voice in 1845 standard Earth days. “Guys?” 

“Spock?” He grabbed my arm, fingers digging into my wrist. I could feel his hope and his panic. “What is this some sick joke?”

I let him hold onto me as I pulled the door open. Rain and the lack of sunlight had darkened his hair. There was a scar running along his cheek. I reached out with my free hand to trace it, meeting Jim’s beautiful eyes. “T’hy’la, how?” 

“It’s a long story,” Jim’s voice broke. He stepped inside, his foot making the floorboard that Leonard called his burglar alarm squeak. He wrapped his arms around us. He was wet. It soaked though my clothes, but I didn’t care. It would help to hide the tears that were streaming down my face. I tucked my face into his shoulder while Leonard kissed him. Then I took my turn, tasting salt on his lips. We were trembling. 

“Welcome home,” Leonard said. “Now tell us what the hell happened to you.” 

“They said you were dead. We tried to find you. I violated orders when they told us to come back.” I was still crying too emotional to attempt to be the green-blooded hobgoblin. In this moment I was human. 

Leonard dragged Jim into the room, shoving him onto the sofa. I retrieved our cups from the windowsill while Leonard grabbed another and the bottle of bourbon. “Drink up. I want to hear all of it.”


	2. Finding My Way Back (To You)

It had been a long, long time since he’d seen them. In his darkest moments he wondered if it was even worth this much effort going back. It would’ve been so much easier just to let himself disappear into the black, let himself die. He wondered if Bones and Spock would’ve intertwined their lives and minds together so far that there would’ve been no room left for him, the absent third. He wondered if they would’ve filled out so much history together that he would’ve stood outside of it, a stranger and a ghost.

They wrapped around him the moment he came through the door and the last three-and-change bone-breaking years, fighting tooth and nail to make him way back into Federation space, back  _home_  after those two years of torment, he knew he had been wrong to worry. The release of that anguished fear hurt more than anything else, like tearing out a jagged piece of glass from an oozing wound.

He soaked in their touch, mouth hungry for the shape of their lips against his. Jim moved between Spock and Bones with dizzy disorientation, hands shaking as he caught Bones’ waist, Spock’s narrow hip. The doctor led him to a couch. He sank down into it; his first thought, amazingly, was that it hadn’t been here before, looking out the window.

He followed their every move with rapt attention. He stared openly at the line of Spock’s spine, at the elegance of his long fingers. He watched the movement of Leonard’s eyebrows, the twist of his mouth with heartbreaking openness.

Five years. Five years without touch, without the heat of the Vulcan sun or the spice of the Georgian breeze in his mind. He’d barely been able to recall the images, painted a dull grey. They’d had each other but he had only survived on memory, distorting and melting together under the cocktails he’d been administered. Crumbs to a starving man.

Jim took the glass of bourbon automatically, even going so far as to take a sip. His expression twisted. He coughed weakly, goosebumps erupting on his shoulders, spreading down his arms. He huddled automatically against Spock when the man first sat beside him, breathed out in a low keen when Bones took his other side, warm broad hands against him. Water ran down the back of his neck in a thin rivulet, spoiling the color of his collar. His coat had been left to drip in the entryway but the cuffs of his pants were still wet, cold against his skin. It made the shock of heat from the two men that much more alien. Some part of his mind was dismayed that the Vulcan felt so warm to him, reminded him that it meant he was colder than he thought. He ignored it. He didn’t care. It didn’t  _matter_.

“That story stars with Romulans,” Jim began, the lines around his eyes deepening as he squinted, considering how to go about his tale, wondering how in depth he wanted to go. “They beamed me up, destroyed my communicator. They have a cloaking device for their ships, that’s why no one found me. Klingons got involved. They’re really considering an alliance.  _Fuck_.” Twisting, Jim pressed his nose into Spock’s neck. He pushed off his wet shoes, pulling his legs against him, feet up on the couch. He should be talking to Starfleet, debriefing. He’d deliberately stayed under their radar to make his journey back to  _here_  as short as possible.

“It was a lot of things. They wanted to know more about Nero. The red matter. Their sun going supernova. They were  _very interested_  in that bit, and I don’t mean the astronomists. There’s something else going on-” he knew it wasn’t what they wanted to know, but he had so much in his head, so many things he had to remember,  _worry_  about… Spock was warm and Bones was attentive and he was cracking, all the stoic self-determination that had pushed him here collapsing how that he’d reached his goal.

Jim set the glass of bourbon down, his hand shaking too hard to make drinking viable. He caved in on himself for a moment before standing on wavering legs, turning to look at them both on the couch. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I just- Can we talk about this later? Can we just… I  _need…_ **please**.”

Bones stood first, strong hands bracketing the younger man. Jim moved against him, kissing him with the desperate abandon that had given flavor to their first kiss, nearly four years after he’d admitted to himself that he was painfully in love with the doctor.

Spock’s palm ran down his spine over the light material of his shirt and Jim shuddered. His fingers sought out the half-Vulcan’s, fingertips flush together before Kirk traced the line of them, pressing into Spock’s palm. He turned to press his wet mouth, half-open, against the man’s throat, a low pained whine in the back of his throat. His voice was a whisper now, cracked. “Please. I’ve been-”  _five years without you_  hurt too much to say. He’d never admitted it out loud and every thought of it shredded pieces from him, tore wounds he couldn’t heal alone.

Spock nodded against him, took both hands and escorted him to their bedroom. Bones followed close behind, his palm warm against Jim’s shoulder. They maneuvered him down to sit at the edge of the bed. Jim shivered again when the Vulcan kneeled down to help with his wet socks, with his belt, when Bones bustled into the bathroom, reemerging with a towel and a tricorder. It felt like a fever dream. He closed his fist around the tricorder’s sensor device, staring back at Bones with naked apprehension in his bright eyes. “Don’t.” He shook his head when Spock offered him fresh clothes to sleep in, his eyebrows pulling together into something like pain. “No I- I want to touch you. Please.”

Spock conceded with the slightest of nods, fingertips tracing along his skin. Bones frowned at him as though he were a puzzle. For a lighting-flash moment of anguish, Jim was convinced that it had been too long after all, that they didn’t understand each other anymore. He swallowed the fear when Spock kissed him, squeezing his eyes shut. No, that wasn’t what he meant, it wasn’t-

‘ _Be calm, T’hy’la.’_

Jim exhaled suddenly, choked on his own breath. When he opened his eyes Spock was already disrobing, his movements graceful in their complete efficiency. Bones frowned for a moment more, grumbling that he was going to do a full scan on Jim come morning and ‘no damn way are you getting out of it, kid, I need to know you’re okay after whatever happened out there, and I don’t mean that fool brain of yours,’ stripping off and throwing his clothes vaguely towards a hamper in the corner.

He didn’t used to do that. That habit was Jim’s.

Spock guided him under the covers with a firm touch, slipping in beside him. Bones pressed against his back, warm, solid. Jim hissed at the expanse of pliant skin against him. It was like plunging into a hot bath after too long in the snow: so perfect it was nearly painful. Another shiver wracked through his body, arching his spine. Bones muttered something warmly, his accent thicker than usual. How long had they been back in Georgia? His lips pressed against the back of Jim’s neck, breath moist and hot. A strong arm coiled around both him and Spock, pulling them all three close together. Their legs tangled together naturally, Jim’s heel hooked on Spock’s Achilles tendon and his other foot pushed against Bones’ calf. Spock’s fingers brushed through his hair once. He pressed a delicate kiss against Jim’s forehead. “We have missed you, T’hy’la,” he murmured, warm.

His fingers brushed down Jim’s cheek for a moment before resolving into a familiar position. Bones pulled back from the way he’d twisted himself around Jim just far enough to allow the mirror image to settle on his own face.

“My mind to your mind.”

‘ _My thoughts to your thoughts.’_

The planet they were on had never strictly existed. It was hotter than any summer ought to be, the blazing sun coloring the sky red. A large fanged creature bared its furred stomach to the heat, squirming happily. It smelled like Georgia, peach trees ripe with pink-orange fruit and spice on the breeze. Tall wheatfield stalks shook in the dry breeze, the buzz of cicadas loud in his ears. A bush of hybrid roses bloomed red as blood out of cracked red earth. A mare, bred for riding, coat black and slick, ran ahead of two geldings. The Riverside shipyard jutted out from the Earth in the distance and, even from here, he could see the silver lines of his lady just  _ready_  to be taken out. It was a cobbled image of memories, in places impossible and in more improbable and-

 _Home_.

Jim sank to the earth, digging his fingers into it and, for the first time in far too long, he let himself cry.


	3. If you have lost yourself, come home {to us} and find it.

The rain was an interesting metaphor, Len supposed, something both soothing and naturally depressing, good for the health of the land and yet darkening the skies. Five years and the healed-over wounds didn't hurt any less. They drank their tea and coffee, moving in familiar domestic circles, and it still hurt with a familiar and addicting ache to brush mouths, minds, and feel the echo of Jim there.

"Fuck," Len muttered, blinking hard as he leaned against Spock. The man he loved as much as the one they had lost, Len hooked a hand around the familair waist, taking what comfort he could from the shared grief. It didn't erase the soul-deep instinct thrumming in the bond that someone was missing. It was easier to bitch about where to go, about time not healing their wounds, than it was to admit that there would never be a cessation of loneliness, no matter how tightly they pressed together.

He couldn't help scowling at the words, head turning to level the glare at their front door. Company was an unwelcome idea, an intruder to the sanctity of this place. Here they toasted their loved one's memory one last time before the upcoming rumors of war became a reality, the Romulans and the Klingons forging an alliance that could rip the Federation to pieces. Before a battle took them to the edge of known space, perhaps to leave them in wreckage there, they would make one more bundle of memories saved in their bond for the lover that was not coming back. Although, Leonard though with irony, in a way they had been floating in wreckage since the day they lost Jim.

Spock's hand on his shoulder halted his reach for the door, but the touch carried a frisson of emotion breaking through Vulcan control. Something intuition-based that made Leonard's spine feel loose and unhinged.  _No, can't be, a mistake-_

Spock didn't make mistakes like that, but it didn't explain the voice he'd been waiting to hear, the ripple of their bond as it began to react. The telepathic t'hy'la union wasn't a perfectly mapped thing, too intimate to give over to scientific study, but the sense of recognition of the matching spirit was unmistakable and how,  _how_  could that be? A moment later the door was opening to blonde hair, eyes too blue to be real, a face so familiar but different now. Five years different.

Sopping wet cloth, solid muscle and skin were vividly real under his hands as they pulled him inside, and Leonard could swear something broken was snapping together inside of his skull the moment skin to skin contact was made. Rain-wet lips on his, desperate and precious, one hand curling around Jim's neck to feel the damp short hair as Spock kissed him next.

It was a blur afterwards of holding close, of instinct to hold on and protect as Jim shivered against them. Their beloved, their best friend, wherever he'd been had left him fractured and unsteady- Jesus Christ, how had he survived five years without either of them to keep him sane?

It was selfish, but Leonard didn't really want to know how or why, not yet. If this was a dream, a delusion, if somehow it couldn't be true then he didn't want to know. The bond was whispering traces of distress and love and  _Jim_  to him every time his hands moved over cloth and skin, not enough without a meld but so much more than he'd had for the last five years. Every detail stood out in sharp relief, the sky blue of his eyes and the pallor of his skin, the angles of the jagged scar, spikes of damp lashes, messy hair and the fine edge of dark blonde stubble. His arms, shoulders, hands, chest and waist and legs. He was underweight, hadn't been eating right.

It was all he needed to know. He had them both, and Jim was alive and scared and shaking, and he didn't want to know. All he wanted was to hold on, to wrap the blonde up in both of them until there was no corner of his body or mind that felt cold anymore. The need to heal, to care for their bondmate left him stupefied in the bedroom when Jim told him not to use the tricorder. It arrested his thoughts, a hard jolt before he could process beyond  _but I need to take care of you_.

The sight of Jim shaking and Spock soothing him was enough to steady him, to set aside the tool and toss his clothes aside, grumbling because how goddamned like Jim to be back from five fucking years of torture and mayhem, and still be dodging his physicals.

Skin against skin was a livewire, the bond already electric and writhing in readiness, something like fear because finally after how long, they had him again and all of the scar tissue where he belonged would have to be torn away, but that was alright. Leonard would bleed over and over again to make sure Jim fit exactly where he should be.

In the end, though, it didn't hurt. Not like he thought it would. It was heat and warmth, and home, and the first crack of their T'hy'la's barriers breaking as he let all of the agony pour out. A wound draining toxins, Leonard and Spock moved in perfect tandem to take the weight of those memories, preserving the tactically important in their own minds to take the weight temporarily off of Jim, easing the pointless stretches of pain that held no value except to isolate him from them.

Days passed, time inconsequential. Periodically one of them got up to make a meal and help get it down Jim's throat as they held his mind still in a healing thrall within theirs; sometimes Spock and sometimes Leonard went, depending on who Jim was clinging the most to. Years of training his mind with both of them and then with Spock meant that, while Leonard could not initiate a meld, he could hold one together until their third returned, keeping the fragile bridge solid and tightly connected.

By the time they let the meld slip enough to let Jim consciously move away from them, the bond had snapped into place so securely that barely a brush of skin or breath from proximity was needed for it to flare again. The weight and texture of reality meant long hours welcoming back their lover in all the best ways, and Leonard spent hours memorizing the new colors and curves to Jim's body. Healing the bruises, kissing the scars, reclaiming him inch by inch until he was not a product of five years alone, baptized by lips and teeth and careful hands to be once again, and wholly, theirs.


End file.
